camcorder info.com have just done a review of the HD2000 and were impressed with it. This is one camcorder I have been very interested in getting. I have an old C40 and generally like the video on it but have been looking into getting a decent HD camcorder. I tried the HD700 and liked the video during the day, but had to return it as I couldn't live with the lens and the noisy photos (which seemed worse than my C40!)

As the HD2000 was taking it's time being released I tried out the Canon HF100 seeing as it was getting great reviews but was a little disappointed with the reds tending to come out pink. I had intended to exchange it just in case it was faulty (and an email with Canon seemed to suggest this might be a possibility) but amazon.com decided to put the price up to a whopping $899.99! newegg.com have it for the same price but only allow exchanges not returns. If I find the pinkish reds are a quirk of the HF100 and decide not to live with it, I wouldn't be able to return it.

Anyway with the positive review on camcorder info.com I am thinking I might just wait now for the HD2000. The Sanyos seem to have a more pleasing color to their videos than Canon for me.

Thanks for linking to the review.
It made me resolved to buy another HF100 tomorrow. They are clearly a dying breed

The noise data they gave on the new HF-S100 at 60i, 16lux vs the 11 lux of the HF100, is the clincher for me... Canon has blown their lead again :? The quest for more pixels has thrown imager performance out the window...

Of course, at 24p the HF100 gives 4Lux sensitivity - and that is where we mostly use it I used to use the HD1000 at "High Sensitivity" (15p) for all the same reasons - good colors indoors...

There is a lot of color noise in the HD2000 sample they give for their low-light resolution test. Look at the greens. Chunky as heck.

However, If the street price is around $500 I will probably end up buying one of the HD2000 as well. It does look as though Sanyo have solved many of the problems they had with the HD1000. Of course, the review didn't test focus hunting, nor did it test Image Stabilization

Which reminds me, if noise causes a plane macro block on a plane surface, does the noise really exist, at least to noise metric software. Of course the noise does exist. I wonder if noise removal could reduce noise so much that it evens it out, and potentially so much that a macro block will loss it completely. But what happens if you shoot a really scene in low light with lots of detail and colors, would the noise and macro blocks be more evident.

Good point, Wayne, I suspect the blocky conversion in the presence of color noise does not show up in the noise metrics, which are probably looking for pixel-level changes. Those blocks seem to stay in the same place.

I took a video in China just before Christmas with an HF100 on tripod, and the dark blue background had a lot of that blockiness we can see in the HD2000 green. Mind you, there was almost no light in the room If I had been watching the monitor more carefully I probably would have selected 1/12 shutter speed, which still looks OK on the Canon at 24p (as long as you just have talking heads and people moving around slowly )

ps: I always used to have the HD700 and HD1000 on 1/15 ('High Sensitivity')...

Yes a couple of important missing items though to be fair, they did say it had excellent auto focusing. In the comments section they also say they are wrapping up the Image Stabilization test for this camera but they said they'll be releasing the scores when their new system is finalized (whenever that may be!)

What is annoying for me, is that I want a good picture at a shutter down to 30/25/24th/s before it adjusts gain, and then only lowers shutter again when the gain is bad, but have a camera that seems to preference high gain then lower shutter down t 1/15th, which means the picture is mostly grainy when out fo the sun. Cameras like that are not worth it.

I suspect the HD2000 auto-focusing ought to be very good. It generally was OK on the HD1000 provided there was adequate lighting level. The higher gain of the HD2000 electronics, and, I suspect, a more sensitive CMOS, should improve focusing under all normal conditions.

As for the stabilization, I run all my handheld shots through Deshaker in Virtualdub before editing them onto DVD or YouTube. Even the OIS cannot beat post-processing like Deshaker achieves So IMO that issue is somewhat moot, as long as their EIS is at least as good as the HD1000.

I might add that the HD1000 EIS became pretty poor when "High Sensitivity" was selected. I suspect the lower shutter speed (1/15) wasn't programmed properly into the stabilzer software.